The Future of Education

The Soviet Union tried to enforce the cultivating of a new (socialistic) human being by using community structures. The new human supposed to follow the new moral. That was the intention to design the Soviet Burlaw (“comrades”) courts. The immoral behaviour was discussed in public so the in-fault person was penalized, at the same time the concept of Good was explained to the community. The most respectful members of a community voluntary promoted themselves to be the arbitrators with support of the open voting. Those courts could inflict penalty or recommend person to be fired, they were able to lay social censure with a proclaiming on community meeting and the correctional labour [1]. From the ethical point of view, the main problem is that Burlaw court was the formalised way of social disapproval that came not from some law but not from disapproval of each individual. That is how person was forced to educate in the given moral system. The group condemnation could be considered as even worse evil, since the pressure on the individual was much bigger. Indeed, the nature of the Burlaw court presupposed that a person should stick to the position of the Communist party but not to any personal moral stance. The true moral education, even  based on education through the wrong examples, need to take into account diverse positions, as well as motives and results of the action etc. We need to keep that in mind than analysing the work of contemporary ethic committees. The principle of tolerance makes it important to build a reasonable construction of moral education. Ethical committees today are common both in Europe (Denk raum fresach, France; The European council on tolerance and reconciliation, Belgium etc.) and Russia (The State Duma commission of Parliamentary Ethics, the universities’ ethical committees etc.). Therefore it is important to take into account previous experience in the same field in the beginning of 21th cent. 

Keywords: Moral education; moral committees; ethical committees; Burlaw courts;
 

References:

[1] Filatov V. Participation of Ural peasant take part in community voluntary legal structures in the early 1930s, Humanitarian and pedagogical Research, 2017, p.73-78.